That Big Black Bird i Saw Last Night

The Bird

The bird sitting on the yellow gravel shoulder was pretty much a bird like any other. Two wings, a beak, no bladder, and all that shit. It though thoughts that other birds think, which were pretty inconsequential really.

It was pretty much just a black fucking bird, with one little extra errand to run.

But that didn’t matter, not at the moment. This crow had been the first to find the fresh kill it was feeding upon. A raccoon, who had gotten its back crushed by a station wagon. The raccoon had run a hundred mad circles, dragging its useless hindquarters, and leaving a trail of blood, shit and viscera behind it. Then it died – fighting ‘til its final breath. Not due to some valiant effort, but because it knew no other way. Imagined no peace wich might come after, fathomed no eternal rest, just died.

And this crow had been the first on the scene. Taking first the eyes of the carcass, not because it found them rewarding or a delicacy in any way, simply because they were easily accessible. This crow then set to work on the soft belly, keeping an eye on the horizon for more of its own kind.

It found neither pleasure nor repulsion in its work, it simply obeyed a drive and did what was needed to keep on living.

It knew neither past, yesterday had failed to imprint during a dreamless sleep, nor tomorrow, it had no way of piecing together the present to estimate the future.

When more of its kind did come, it did not feel comradery, did not feel jealous over the morsels it was denied, simply squawked, and shuffled to make room.

And when a drive deeper and stranger than hunger drew it away from the kill, it didn’t question, didn’t ponder, just lifted its great black wings and flew.

The Boy

When he chose his journal he did so with great care. Something dark, ordinary cover, that was a must. Something with blank pages so that he could sketch when he needed to , and so that he could fit as much, or as little, as he wanted on every page. Something thick, but not insurmountably so. The end was in site, and tyme is oh so finite.

Eventually he found exactly what he needed. He took it home, and up to his room where he wrote these words in fresh red blood, using his grandfathers fountain pen and a scalpel swiped from the biology lab.

“when this ends, so will i” on the inside cover

The Hunger

The crow had flown for 8 days and seven nights, neither eating nor drinking. It was not fully aware of the change coming over it. The transition was too slow, and the hunger too great to think about anything else.

But it had stopped to think. It would have wondered how it knew that it was flying northwest, into the heart of the Bible Belt, would have wondered how it gained the ability to wonder. But all it could think about was the hunger that normal carion could not sate.

Somethingj ust over the horizon drew it on, something just around the bend. It could feel the proximity, like when you’ve been away from the place where you grew up for a really long tyme, and on your way back, when the terrain becomes just familiar enough to give you butterflies in your stomach.

It was that close.

The crow had already passed through the worst of the storms, and it now flew through a cold autumnal drizzle.

Skimming above trees that were mostly barren and black earth marred occasionally by the first traces of the coming winter.

In a blur beneath, the trees stretched like black skeletal fingers pushing up from a dirty white burial shroud, upwards towards the crow as if grasping for it, but falling just short tyme after tyme.

Whatever it was that pulled the bird was old. A force older than the seasons, older than man’s religion, older even than the cold that invaded its feathers and sink into its claes until its very hollow bones ached.

But finally its goal was in sight. A group of four gravestones stood steady in the mist.

Alone, like four mountains on a plain of ploughed earth. It was on the newest of these four stones that the crow landed, shuffled to the side, gave one confused cry, and waited for instinct to move it further.

Her

“I know what they thought. It was stamped on their faces, as plain and as grotesque as the weathered lines of bark that form the screaming faces on the forest trees.

They labeled me, as easily and as readily as you’d label a tuperware container, old turkey, tuna sandwich, egg salad, heart of lamb, still born calf, suicidal, manic depressive, bipolar….

And once they had their labels they had no reason to know me. They put me on the shelf with their other forgotten relics. Shoes that fit too well and now lie in cardboard coffins. Photos taken to replace memories, and then forgotten.

That’s what I am i guess, the photo taken to replace reality and then lost and forgotten anyway.

I’m just thankful that at least one person took the tyme to know me. God, I don’t know how I would have made it this far without him.

He listened, and I believe – I know – that Johnny loved me, and I know that he believed me. I wonder what this will do to him… I wonder what the coming days will turn him in to…

Maybe he’ll know, maybe he’ll figure everything out. Johnny believes in Him after all. And no one else does, not my counselor, not my ‘doctor’, not my parents, not my Father. I’ve been fighting this battle with Him for so long now, and He’s winning. I can’t keep pushing Him out. He’s so cold, and so strong, and his pupils spin like mad black whirlpools when he comes.

Maybe I can fight him off a little longer, and maybe it’ll be enough to find His name.